Simon Whaley’s Business of Writing: November 2023—Ditching the Pressure
How being flexible with your goals might make your more productive
Welcome to my November 2023 newsletter. I can’t believe it will soon be Christmas. Eek! Actually, I can be rather smug this year because I’ve already written my Christmas cards and, apart from a few little pieces, my Christmas shopping is done.
I couldn’t help but smile the other day when I told a friend this, and she nodded, saying, “Yes, I know.”
Puzzled, I asked her how.
“I read about it in this week’s issue of The People’s Friend.”
It wasn’t until I checked online that I spotted the magazine had used my travel piece about Gloucester in the latest issue. I wrote it last December, and turned it into a hunt for an unusual Christmas present, to give my travel piece a slightly different structure, but a seasonal one. If you fancy reading it, I’ve put a copy online here for you to read. (It’s a free link, as you’re a newsletter subscriber.)
Topping Up The Creative Well
It was my writers’ group annual retreat a couple of weeks ago. Every year, we hire a big self-catering property (or two neighbouring smaller ones, as it turned out this year), for a long weekend, with a view of taking ourselves away from family and work and giving ourselves space to write. This year, we visited the Welsh coastal town of Criccieth.
This was the 21st year we’ve done this, and it’s a great way to devote several hours a day to your writing project, albeit interspersed with bracing coastal walks (walking is great thinking time) and chatting with other writers in the kitchen while you make a tea or coffee.
For someone like me, who writes full time, it might seem a bit of a busman’s holiday. After all, I spend a lot of my day writing. Even so, I always take it as an opportunity to top up my creative well.
Being inspired every day is hard work, so we must take ourselves off to do different things and experience some variety from our day-to-day lives.
Pressure-free Productivity
Typically, we can’t get into the self-catering properties until 4 o’clock, so I like to make the most of the day. Despite only being two hours or so from home, I always set off bright and early, using the time to explore. Last year, I spent most of the day in the Welsh village of Porthmadog, and the photos I took and the experiences I enjoyed became a travel article. (That earned me more than I paid for the weekend retreat. Bonus!)
This year, the weather was in my favour again, so I stopped off at the Italianate village of Portmeirion. Built in two phases after each of the World Wars, it’s nothing like anything else in Wales or the UK. This was my fourth visit, and there’s so much to see here. I always see something new with each visit.
I’ve pitched it as a travel feature to a couple of places, and I’m waiting to hear back, but I’m not worried if the pitches are unsuccessful. For me, the retreat is just about doing something else, albeit creative, hopefully. I’ve discovered that if I put too much pressure on myself to produce something that I can pitch or sell, I’m not as productive as I’d like to be.
We had three new members join us for our retreat this year, and I suggested that they set some sort of goal for what they wanted to achieve this weekend, but to be realistic. We often over-estimate what we think we can achieve in a couple of days. Also, it’s important not to pressurise ourselves if we don’t achieve everything we set out to do.
For writers who don’t get time to write, finding they have an entire weekend in which to be creative can be debilitating. Panic sets in when the words don’t flow. Come on! You’re only here for the weekend. You’ve got to get some writing done!
I’ve been trying for months to get the first draft of my third novel finished. I’ve been so busy with other projects that, despite having written 75,000 words, I’m struggling to finish it. To be honest, I’ve forgotten what I’ve written. So my goal was to re-read those 75,000 words and then write some more!
But that didn’t happen. Not quite. Yet, I’m not beating myself up about it.
One of the reasons I struggled to get going was because I’ve always wanted to have a go at writing something for one of those Chicken Soup for the Soul anthologies. This American publisher produces several anthologies a year, and anyone can submit a piece of work for consideration. (If they accept, they pay about $250 for about 1200 words, and you get a couple of copies of the anthology. To find out more, visit https://www.chickensoup.com/story-submissions/possible-book-topics/.)
Well, they’re putting together an anthology about dogs, and I’ve had a vague idea about what to write about, but I hadn’t put pen to paper. It was while I was out walking along the coastline in Criccieth that the idea solidified. Even though I wanted to get going on the novel, I knew I wouldn’t be able to until I’d committed that first draft of my dog story to paper.
Sometimes ideas are like that. That might not seem a great way of doing ‘business’, but I’ve realised over time that if I have an idea in my head, and it’s not what I need to be working on, I can’t push forward with what I should be working on until I’ve got that idea down on paper. Amazingly, 1,400 words flowed (so I have a few I can ditch during the editing process).
Did I meet my retreat goal of re-reading the novel and starting to write it again? Nope. But once I’d drafted that dog story, my mind was clear, and I moved on to the novel. And before I’d finished reading the first three chapters, I’d spotted a flaw in the novel. I was missing a motive for one of the characters.
For months now, I’ve struggled to understand why I couldn’t get the novel finished. Let’s face it, at 75,000 words, I should be on the downhill stretch galloping toward the denouement and conclusion. And yet, I wasn’t.
Now, I realise there was a structural issue at the start. Already, I’ve thought of extra scenes I need to slot in, and my motivation is there to get them sorted.
I doubt I’d have spotted this had I pressurised myself to ignore the anthology story that was running around in my head, and tried focussing on pushing the novel forward instead. Sometimes, we can be more productive if we don’t pressurise ourselves.
If ever you find yourself struggling, or possibly blocked, think about the pressure you might be putting yourself under. Is there something else you need to clear from your head first? Dealing with that first might free up space in your mind. Ultimately, being in the business of writing means doing some writing. But understanding the writing business means also appreciating that creativity doesn’t always deal with one project at a time.
Murdering Mayhem
As part of the retreat, we also played a murder mystery game during Saturday night’s evening meal. This year, the setting was a vampire ball, and I was a French-aristocrat-turned-vampire from the late 1700s. (No wonder I look a bit long in the tooth.) Still, it gave us a chance to dress up.
ALCS Deadline
This is just a reminder for those of you based in the UK that 30th November is the deadline to register any works published or produced before 31st December 2022 (articles, books, plays, television material) with the ALCS (the Author’s Licensing and Collecting Society). You can find out more on the ALCS website at https://www.alcs.co.uk/.
For those who don’t know, ALCS distributes money to writers from secondary rights. For example, imagine you wrote an article, or a book, and a schoolteacher thought it would be useful to share that with her pupils. She might photocopy it and hand it around at the next lesson. Schools, universities, government departments, and many other organisations pay a licence fee for photocopying material (it’s collected via their photocopying service contract). It’s this money that is then distributed to writers. It’s not just photocopying, though. Secondary rights include repeat fees from television and radio broadcasts, and sometimes Public Lending Right from foreign libraries. (Some countries run schemes that recompense authors each time their book is borrowed from a public library.)
If you’re based outside the UK, have a look at this page on Wikipedia that lists the secondary rights organisations that operate around the world, so see if there’s one in your country. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_copyright_collection_societies. If you’ve had anything published, whether it’s an article, a short story, a book, or had anything professionally performed, you may be entitled to a share of that money. Check it out!
And no matter how big your writing business is, you should never turn away any money you may be legitimately entitled to!
Until next month, keeeeeeeeeep writing!
Best wishes,
Simon